I registered just to say this was an excellent read and that I very much so like this thread.

I assume mastery only becomes as valuable as it does because it's not feasible to have 100% crit rating?

Well no, it's not feasible at all to have 100% crit rating, but as you get closer and closer to 100% Enrage uptime, mastery's value will keep increasing and by the end of this tier (for TG at least) will just be equal to crit.

Pretty much. Crit on its own isn't really good once bt crits nearly always.

All spells and abilities will crit for double damage, baseline. There are a few exceptions where crits can get larger, but the default is x 2.0 for everyone.[1]

I understand it's not practical to gain 100% crit, but in theory, wouldn't you want every ability to crit doing 2x the damage versus the gain from being enraged and doing whatever % it increases damage by?

Of course we'd want every ability to crit. However, when looking at the amount of damage gained from 1 point of crit rating vs 1 point of mastery rating, mastery starts to win out around 45-46% raid-buffed crit. (Not accounting for Gaze trinket proc.) Not to mention that higher enrage uptimes slowly increase the value of mastery as well.

Just a reforge plot of mastery/crit on simcraft for TG and SMF. All the numbers to the left of the vertical blue line indicate reforging crit---> mastery, and everything to the right indicates reforging mastery ---> crit. I had to swap out crit gems for mastery gems on the TG profile because it has already hit the crit soft-cap, and SMF is only ~1000 rating away from hitting the cap as well.

Also, to OP.

3) When the planets don't align and you run a bit low on Enrage uptime, haste is still your friend.

I don't know about you, but generally the planets are aligning when i'm NOT enraged.

Mastery is still better than haste by a fair bit. I think everyone is forgetting how truly awful haste was last tier.

Last tier, the SEP value for haste was around 0.25-0.3. The 50% buff to haste predictably increased the SEP of it to 0.45~, but mastery is worth anywhere from 0.6-0.75 SEP depending on enrage uptime.

Now, adding RPPM gadgets to your equipment does boost the value of haste. I've found that RPPM trinkets tend to boost haste by 0.03 SEP for each trinket, and the meta adds 0.08 sep. Even with 2 RPPM trinkets, a RPPM meta and a RPPM tier bonus, the value of haste only manages to rise to 0.6, and generally by the time you attain all of these, the value of mastery has gone up to 0.7-0.75.

I don't know about you, but generally the planets are aligning when i'm NOT enraged.

Mastery is still better than haste by a fair bit. I think everyone is forgetting how truly awful haste was last tier.

Last tier, the SEP value for haste was around 0.25-0.3. The 50% buff to haste predictably increased the SEP of it to 0.45~, but mastery is worth anywhere from 0.6-0.75 SEP depending on enrage uptime.

Now, adding RPPM gadgets to your equipment does boost the value of haste. I've found that RPPM trinkets tend to boost haste by 0.03 SEP for each trinket, and the meta adds 0.08 sep. Even with 2 RPPM trinkets, a RPPM meta and a RPPM tier bonus, the value of haste only manages to rise to 0.6, and generally by the time you attain all of these, the value of mastery has gone up to 0.7-0.75.

This is exactly the kind of thought I've been having in the past days with Fury as well. That although RPPM is increased by haste, that its needed value for an increase over crit or mastery would be madness. Collision, you sir - are a great resource. Maths are fun.

All spells and abilities will crit for double damage, baseline. There are a few exceptions where crits can get larger, but the default is x 2.0 for everyone.[1]

I understand it's not practical to gain 100% crit, but in theory, wouldn't you want every ability to crit doing 2x the damage versus the gain from being enraged and doing whatever % it increases damage by?

Yes, but since mastery increases everything and crit after BT is capped only increases most abilities and stops giving extra raging blows it takes a nosedive in value, whereas mastery continues to improve. Once enrage uptime reaches 100% (50% crit) then mastery starts improving all your damage all the time.

Yes, but since mastery increases everything and crit after BT is capped only increases most abilities and stops giving extra raging blows it takes a nosedive in value, whereas mastery continues to improve. Once enrage uptime reaches 100% (50% crit) then mastery starts improving all your damage all the time.

Just a slight correction, the actual break point is around 40% self buffed crit, not 50% total. Also, mastery doesn't predicate value upon being always enraged, it simply gains value as enraged uptime is increased whilst crit loses value. That's why the break point isn't at 100% BT crit chance, but lower.

but crit value will start increasing again, once you get more mastery around 40% selfbuffed crit, so really its just a balancing act until you reach 46% self buffed crit and start going all out on mastery...

On a purely damage value (ignoring enrage uptimes due to crit atm and neglecting the new legendary meta):
600 rating base= 2% mastery or 1% crit.
1% crit= 1% you do 200% damage.
2% mastery= Depending on enrage uptime, you do 2% more damage.
So, they should be near identical in values per point. However, Mastery is under 300 rating, but also suffers from not being 100% uptime. At the moment, with tier 15 2 set, we are seeing about 90%+ uptime of enrage. However, if we drop 2set, we'll drop to a more crit proportional value, something a little over double the % of crit we have (because CS and Berserkers Rage).
I really want people to take into account the bonus enrage time from the 2set because, although not ground breaking, it's not negligible.

Of course, mastery's value is entirely dictated by the enrage uptime because without enrage mastery does nothing.

Not true at all, for your assumption is based on two false premises. 1.) You assume that mastery's value is only related to crit, because of uptime. This is false. Mastery gains value as you gain strength, such that a 20% gain in DPS via added strength without mastery is closer to 20%+mastery value. 2.) Enrage isn't directly tied to crit, although it is correlated. Meaning there are other factors besides crit which can cause an enrage effect, which your premise disallows.

So you're right in saying crit and mastery are somewhat interellated. You're wrong in how you phrased and defended your stance, however.

Mastery's value is dictated by a number of factors, such as up time (mainly, but not only, tied to crit), strength value (20% mastery with 18k str>20% mastery with 15k strength), and relative crit value.

Remember, SEP ONLY values stats in relation to strength, but you must remember that strengths value changes as well, such that a point of strength is of more/less relative value at different gear levels.

Thus, as we gain gear mastery gains value NOT ONLY because we're critting more, and more crit chance makes crit less valuable after a point, but also because we're gaining more strength, and thus mastery is a superior pure DPS gain, as crit's side benefits (RB, Enrage, Rage) are less valuable in comparison.

TL;DR, Mastery>Crit because it's better from a pure DPS gain after a point.

Are we talking purely Fury? Because I'm getting Haste values in Simcraft that are even higher than Crit.

Yes, but from what I've seen sims are still a bit wonky. Its that R in RPPM. I find it best to use everything you can to get adjusted and tweaked then head into an LFR, a Reg PUG or a guild alt run of old content and try it out. The obvious advantage to LFR is that some of the real raid mechanics are still there. What I mean by this is that (taking the Feather and the Meta for example); I want to time my on use bursts with as much uptime and procs as possible and preferably inside of as many CS's as possible. The feather WILL proc in the beginning and relatively shortly there after at higher iLevel, and therefore haste levels (Landsoul[x] is sitting at 10% forged completely out of it LOL). The meta is a wonderfully helpful ranged ability that even procs on a mob out of melee range from bleeds - this is good while you're chasing Lei Shen or Horridon on occasion (you can even juice a bit using throw or heroic throw to direct its proc).

"More Haste", enough to make PPM's better in a raid environment, would be an insane number for fury as of right now.